Sukkur, Pakistan: Still Displaced by the Floods

A man is pictured with two of his grandchildren in a high school building where they have been living, in the town of Sukkur, Sindh Province. Schools all over Pakistan have been turned into temporary homes for people displaced by the floods.

Young children sleep in a room filled with aid supplies inside the high school. MSF has distributed 1,709 relief kits so far, as well as 668 tents to familes who have no shelter in Sukkur and nearby Larkana.

Men, women, and children staying at the high school receive medical care from an MSF team. MSF continues to conduct mobile clinic consultations and assessments in places where displaced people are sheltering in and around the town of Sukkur.

The MSF teams screen children for malnutrition and provide ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) to malnourished children. MSF has treated 232 severely malnourished children in Sukkur and referred 42 with medical complications to its intensive therapeutic feeding center in Railway Hospital.

Children are examined and treated by MSF medical staff at the high school where they are staying. “There are about 200 camps in Sukkur’s urban area, and it is challenging ... to locate pockets of acutely malnourished children," said Sylvain Groulx, MSF's project coordinator in Sukkur. Groulx says the situation is likely to be the same in more isolated rural areas, where MSF teams plan to begin working next.

Children receive rehydration salts at Civil Hospital in Sukkur. The MSF team has set up 20 oral rehydration points where staff can assess and treat patients suffering from diarrhea, and refer them to a diarrhea treatment center if necessary.

A mother gives her child rehydration salts at the Civil Hospital. MSF is also providing 75,000 liters (19,800 gallons) of clean drinking water daily through water trucks, tanks, and bladders in Sukkur.

Children wait to receive rehydration salts at the Civil Hospital. MSF teams are providing hygiene education services to the community, and distributing soap to displaced people in camps. "We are still very worried about potential epidemic outbreaks," said Sylvain Groulx. "All of the elements conducive for this to happen are present – poor sanitation and water supplies, and people living in cramped conditions in open camp settings."

October 03, 2010

In Sukkur, Sindh Province, as well as other areas in Pakistan, people displaced by the flooding that began at the end of July are still suffering. About 1,198 Pakistani MSF staff, with 135 international staff, have so far conducted more than 49,500 medical consultations and are distributing 1,250,400 liters (330,320 gallons) of clean water per day in Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.